Does home insurance cover damage from lightning?

A

Yes, standard home insurance covers damage from lightning, including zapped electronics and fires caused by lightning.

One way to protect your home is to install a lightning protection system, which provides a network of low-resistance paths that intercept and direct the lightning to the ground. Make sure you hire a qualified professional to install the system because a botched installation can raise the risk of a strike and make damage worse than it would have been without the system.

Before disaster strikes, update your home inventory with detailed records of big-ticket items, such as expensive electronic equipment. Make sure you have enough home insurance to protect expensive personal property. You may need to buy a "floater," which provides extra coverage for certain belongings. Typically, home insurance policies have a coverage limit on expensive items, such as computers.

If your home is struck by lightning, report it to your insurance agent as soon as possible. Check all the outlets and all the electronics that were plugged in. Damage may be hit or miss. Just because the television in the family room survived, doesn't mean the computer in the home office was unaffected.

Don't throw any items away that you plan to claim as damaged until you check with your claims representative.

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